Ising and Bloch walls of phase domains in two-dimensional parametric wave mixing

Abstract

Oscillators driven by a degenerate wave mixing process are bistable in the phase of the generated radiation. In systems with a large Fresnel number, domains of opposite phase form therefore spontaneously. A simple model predicts a real field in which phase domains are separated by Ising-type walls. In this paper we show experimentally (using complex field reconstruction from measurements) and theoretically (by an extended model) that the optical field can be real as well as complex valued and that complex field fronts are related to the front curvature.